Today in Cold War History
1950 : Klaus Fuchs one of the scientists who came to Britain following the end of World War II and helped develop the atomic bomb, is arrested for passing top secret information about the bomb to the Soviet Union
1958 – Founding of the Benelux Economic Union, creating a testing ground for a later European Economic Community.
1959- American Airlines Flight 320, a Lockheed L-188A Electra en route from Chicago Midway International Airport to New York City’s LaGuardia Airport on February 3, 1959. It crashed into the East River on approach; 65 of the 73 on board died.
1960 – British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan speaks of “a wind of change”, an increasing national consciousness blowing through colonial Africa, signalling that his Government is likely to support decolonisation.
1961 – The United States Air Forces begins Operation Looking Glass, and over the next 30 years, a “Doomsday Plane” is always in the air, with the capability of taking direct control of the United States’ bombers and missiles in the event of the destruction of the SAC’s command post.
1961 – A protest by agricultural workers in Baixa de Cassanje, Portuguese Angola, turns into a revolt, opening the Angolan War of Independence, the first of the Portuguese Colonial Wars.
1962 – President Kennedy bans all trade with Cuba except for food & drugs
1965 – Orbiting Solar Observatory 2 launches into Earth orbit
1966 – The unmanned Soviet Luna 9 spacecraft makes the first controlled rocket-assisted landing on the Moon.
1969 – In Cairo, Yasser Arafat is appointed Palestine Liberation Organization leader at the Palestinian National Congress.
1971 – There is a series of house searches by the British Army in Catholic areas of Belfast, resulting in serious rioting and gun battles
1971 – OPEC mandates “total embargo” against any company that rejects 55 percent tax rate
1972 – The first day of the seven-day 1972 Iran blizzard, which would kill at least 4,000 people, making it the deadliest snowstorm in history.

1988: The U.S. House of Representatives rejects Ronald Reagan’s request for more than $36 million in aid to the Nicaraguan Contras.